Matija Bobičić, born in Maribor in 1987, is a part of the younger generation of painters, but is at the same time quite distinct from it. The practice of referencing urban culture saturated with mass media is foreign to him. He uses fragments of distant memories to create obscure, uneasy canvases, which are articulate in their formal language, but deftly avoid a direct, clear narration.His paintings are characterized by swift and clearly intuitive strokes, with which he pours his expressive visions onto the canvases. In his earlier work the bases of his artistic style were rough, somewhat primitivistic patches of color, by which he created crumbling – almost decaying – images of animals (Dog Head, Killer B) and less frequently of people (The Fall of Basquiat). On his newer paintings the unpolished strokes come to the foreground. They become the building blocks of the figures; the only element marking their bodies, although ironically, in an utterly ethereal manner (eg. The Ram, Ghost). Only the heads posses a sense of tangible corporeality. Stylistically they are related to the author’s earlier work, but the patches of color are now limited to a very small, albeit more effective portion of the painting. With apt use of color the emphasized element rises from the seemingly monochrome background and becomes a visual anchor – the point through which the viewer can step into a dialogue with a specific work..

The protagonists in Matija’s work are always secluded, isolated – lost in the spaceless realm of his paintings and completely exposed to the viewer’s gaze. The figures are flat and stylized, more implied than explicitly depicted. They seem like opaque echoes of memories, which will soon be absorbed by the background. The painted figures are dematerialized, completely ephemeral, but they still hold a looming presence. This ambivalence of being stretched between decomposition and experiential wholeness is the mainspring of the images. The anxiety enclosing the figures is underscored by the use of muffled colors which are at key points cut open with screams of intense, saturated color. At first glance the paintings often seem abstract, but they are always structured just enough to offer a hint of a readable image.

Žiga Dobnikar, 2013

PATHS AN COLLISIONS

It has always been a long way from an expressive to a thoughtful and organised artist. In an artist who combines the both , the journey is filled with paths and collisions, as the title of the exhibition states. In the very process of formation of the exhibition the transparency and the presentation have never been in the foreground, though the selected works point exactly at that process in the evolution of the author`s manner. The exhibition, which initially flirted with the idea of presentation suited to a specific space, and thus communicating with the audience on several levels, brought to its surface the wide array of production, sharing the red line in the author`s expression.

The exhibition has not been arranged neither chronologically nor evolutionary, nevertheless its setting tries to function in the space where the works can be exhibited individually as well as associated with the entire concept of the presentation. Aiming at that, its presentation is sliced in the very narration. We could say thet we have here presented the works of the three series of Bobičič`s production: Nocturnal Animls, Collisions, and the latest work , which is self-testiminial allusion.

The author, himself a committed modernist, in the terms of the belief that the painting explains itself, with no need for narration and contextualisation, faciliates the viewer to the open interpretation. His former works are congested with primarily expressive strokes and experimenting with the colour and the lines. They are simultaneously changed, and the author recycles and plays with the reproduction of the certain motifs in multifold works. His figures , if existant, are merely apparitions, levelled to his canvass, submerging or materialising from the background od the canvasses, which are mostly spaceless, or just evoke the onsets of the space, what adds a further dimension to his works.

The author`s Nocturnal Animals are already the place trying to introduce the conscious strokes and thoughtfully placed graphics, which bring the expressive abstraction to a formalisation, what has become a regularity he questions and crumbles its parts into isolated elements which he perpetually recycles. Figures are manifested as apparitions emerging in an unidentified space, better to say, as memories, which vanish or materialize from subconsciousness. Although these are paintings on canvass, the classic media, which he has been faithful to continuously throughout his work, he has been lately bringing it to a collage.Nocturnal Animals still being the realm of confusion and chaos, anxiety and darkness, are slowly changing into organised and thoughtful forms, giving the impression of organisation and clarity. But only at the first glance, as for his paintings Collisions present merely the trial of establishing order. That is hinted at by sketches in the corners of the paintings, in other words, some drafts, which in the process come to life in the whole canvass, starting point being marked and offering the unique vision of the initial process of the work itself. The organisation and capture are additionally supported by the shapes of circles and cakes, which are mathematical symbols. One could say that it plays with accuracy, which is in the process consciously transformed into a variety of the original form. If we proceed, he denies the exactness itself, which has always been an obstacle for his creative thinking. Thus he overcomes it, trying to speak through formality and exactness, concurrently coming to the unexpected results, transcribing the »sketch« in the corner of the work to the wole canvass. At that moment the idea of micro and macro cosmos are seized, as one is reflected in the other and vice versa. In the painting Dimension the concept is repeated three times.It makes one interested into his third type and at the same time the latest work ( at least when the text was being written), which represents the collage and the portrait of the same framed collage. It namely represents the reflection and pondering about his own work, further distancing from his student`s opus. Portrait of the framed collageis the work composed of two parts, the framed collage and its portrait. In portraying the collage, the author approaches the most exact imitation to be traced in his production. The composition is imitated almost to a detail, bringing distortions in the portrait of the motive to a minimum. We can trace the painted collage, paspartu and the frame itself, which has also been painted on the canvass.If I may be allowed to predict the development, Bobičić has been growing from the impulsive author , who recycles his paintings, reverses, creases and adjusts them in the very process of creation, into a much more refined and thoughtful author, who captures and renders his impulsive artistic expression, populated by demons, into a more refined, but still abstract form. Following the development of his work and through the works exhibited in the gallery, we can pursue the history o fan artist, who, takes a journey into organising his expression. He starts the process by introducing the graphic techniques and collage into his works, in the series of works Collisions, he achieves that by transcription from a smaller to a bigger scene. The climax of that process is represented by the disintigration and separation of the form in the process of creation of Portrait of a framed collage.Here we can observe two separated elements, which are physically prted, within the same work. Collage and its portrait, whichis anaysed in the process of potraying, thus start leaving separate lives, although the other will not exist witout the first one, the former without the latter one will be valued less.The title Paths and collisions thus interprets effectively the presented works, as well as the concept itself. The author and the exhibition are stretched between collisions and paths. The former in the creative process, the exhibition in the confrontation of diverse cycles, which are at the first sight oppose each other, although there is the path among them conneting them into unity.